


I Want (The Valium Remix)

by redsnake05



Category: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore | If on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
Genre: Community: remixduello, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-19
Updated: 2010-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-12 18:37:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I just want to read a book, that's all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want (The Valium Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).
  * Inspired by [If On a Winter's Night a Traveler Fanfic by Mystery Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/37592) by [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/pseuds/seekingferret). 



I just want to read a book. That's all. I don't have huge demands. I don't insist on inspirational prose or themes of great significance. A page-turning thriller is just as good as a Regency romance, seriously, so long as it is a story. I just need the words, the beautiful friction of ideas, the gasp or hum or crash of the climax. I need the resolution.

You don't know what it's like, starting all these books and being thwarted just as you're getting invested in it. It's like a new show cancelled mid-season, or the person who kisses your cheek and dumps you after you've introduced them to your cat. At least they have the courtesy to lie and say it's them, not you.

Not these books, though. They just _stop_. I'm starting to think that it is me. I've gone beyond puzzled, beyond frustrated. You can't imagine it.

I dream each night of blank pages, waiting for ink. These dreams leave me yearning for black on white, the buzz of typography crowding over paper. I want full stops like a finger over closed lips, or like a gag. I want serif feet; Atalanta running in endless marathons. I want the bravado of chapter headings. I want the kiss-curl of g and the viperative s, all marching in front of my eyes. Line after line of it, crawling over my page. Each letter forms a word, and each word makes a sentence. The sentences build into paragraphs, each one balancing ideas and conflict like acrobats with plates. They juggle and I am dazzled by the flicker of all this magic. I want it.

I play it off like it's just a puzzle. It is; I am not sure how I ended up with Minerva and Albus and a magical motorcycle roaring towards them. I'd like to know that it stops in time. I pretend that I am just confused, and that is part of it. Power Rangers, Psyche, porn, fighting: it's a melee. There is no form. Without it, what do I have?

I'm worried that perhaps I will never again see an ending. I'll never get the satisfaction of closing a book and sighing, my brain full of letters and ideas. I will be a puppet without stuffing, pulled out for ventriloquy and found to have nothing worth saying. I'll be a post-modern experiment, alone in an apartment with blank paper falling like snowflakes from a sullen, truthless sky.


End file.
